Former Indian leg-spinner Piyush Chawla has backed Suryakumar Yadav to get back into form after a poor run in the five-match T20I series against England. SKY could manage 28 runs in five matches at an average of 5.60 and failed to lead from the front.
However, Chawla said Yadav has performed consistently in T20Is and thus he was given the captaincy onus after Rohit Sharma’s retirement. The 34-year-old has scored 2598 runs in 83 T20Is at an average of 38.21 and a strike rate of 167.07.
SKY was bamboozled on slower balls by English bowlers as the visitors didn’t give him much pace on the ball, which is his strength.
“You cannot say there is a question mark because when a player becomes a captain, he would have performed a lot earlier to become the captain, and the way he is leading the team. We all know that he hasn’t scored runs in seven or eight innings, and Surya also knows that,” Piyush Chawla said on Star Sports show Match Point.
The former spinner added SKY knows how to get out of the rut as he has all the experience under his belt.
“He knows better how to come out of it. It’s a matter of just one knock for such a big player. When you score 30 to 40 runs and get a start, you convert it into a big knock, and then that one knock changes the entire thing,” Chawla observed.
On the other hand, former England swashbuckling batter Kevin Pietersen noted that the English pacers had the wood on Sanju Samson and Suryakumar Yadav in the T20I series.
“Not so sure about a change in approach. I just think the fast bowlers got to him and Sanju Samson, and they just had a series to forget, pretty similar to what Harry Brook had against you guys. It happens,” he replied.
Pietersen said SKY is not a robot even though he has played some crazy knocks but feels he is allowed to have one poor series.
“I had many a series where you failed to return the numbers that you wanted to return. The guy is not a robot. Not a robot at all. He is a guy who has played crazy innings. We have been mesmerized by the kind of stuff that he does with the bat. If he has a series where he doesn’t score runs, so what?” he elaborated
The first ODI between India and England will be played at the Vidarbha Cricket Association Stadium, Nagpur on Thursday.
